BMW To Open Additive Manufacturing Campus in Germany

3D Printing Industry reports on yet another 3D printing center to open – this time in Germany. The most fascinating aspect of this latest announcement is that it comes from automobile manufacturer BMW Group.

BMW Group has invested approximately $12.3 million into this “Additive Manufacturing Campus,” which is scheduled to open early next year. BMW envisions this campus as a 6,000 square meter facility, focusing “on prototyping, series production of parts, and customized solutions for the automotive industry.

As BMW’s Head of Production Integration Udo Hanle explains: “our new Additive Manufacturing Campus will concentrate the full spectrum of the BMW Group’s 3D printing expertise at a single location. This will allow us to test new technologies early on and continue developing our pioneering role.”

This Additive Manufacturing Campus will be located, specifically, in Oberschleissheim, which is north of Munich. It will “accommodate up to 80 BMW employees, with space for over 30 industrial systems for additive manufacturing in metal and plastic.”

As BMW concludes: “The team there will evaluate new and existing technologies in both plastics and metals printing and develop them to series maturity. Our goal is to provide the optimum technology and process chain, be it for individual components, small production runs or even large-scale manufacturing.”